Description

Destination Earth – DestinE – is an ambitious initiative of the European Commission’s Digital Europe programme to develop a highly accurate digital twin, or replica, of Earth.

This would allow users of all levels to better explore natural and human activity, and to develop and test a range of scenarios and potential risk assessment and adaptation strategies. For example, it would allow policymakers to anticipate and mitigate the effects of extreme weather events and climate change, saving lives and alleviating economic consequences.

Bringing together scientific and industrial excellence from across Europe, DestinE will contribute to revolutionising the European capability to monitor and predict our changing planet, complementing existing national and European efforts such as those provided by the national meteorological services and the Copernicus Services, and will support the European Commission’s Digital Strategy and the Green Deal priority actions on climate change, biodiversity and deforestation.

Under the European Commission’s leadership, and in coordination with the Member States, scientific communities and other stakeholders, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) are tasked with delivering the first phase of the programme by 2024.

ECMWF’s role is to build the complex Earth-system simulation and simulation-observation fusion software and data environment, that will be used to deliver the first two high-priority digital twins on weather induced extremes and climate change adaptation.  

ESA’s role is to build the DestinE core service platform providing users with the access to Digital Twins data, as well as access to data analysis tools and collaborative services to promote the development of application and new capabilities.

EUMETSAT’s role in DestinE is to establish a multi-cloud and federative DestinE Data Lake and to provide operational support to Digital Twins of the Earth and the DestinE core service platform.

About the event

As part of their respective tasks under Destination Earth, ECMWF, ESA and EUMETSAT intend to procure scientific and technical capabilities and solutions to deliver the first phase of Destination Earth. The procurements will be published in the form of Invitations to Tender (ITTs). This event provided a high-level overview of each of the organisations’ intended activities and procurements, and offered the opportunity for interested parties to ask questions.